Last month, millions of Americans opened their Sunday newspapers and found amid the usual pile of coupons and advertising flyers something unusual: a free DVD of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War with the West.”
The film, a well-researched foray into the world of Islamofascism, features an array of scholars including Sir Martin Gilbert, Robert Wistrich and Daniel Pipes; investigative journalist Steven Emerson; and extensive footage of the anti-Semitic and anti-American fare that is par for the course on Arab and Islamic television.
The documentary’s thesis is simple: radical Islam is at war with the West, and its hatred of Jews and Western democracy isn’t based on misunderstandings but on a faith-based fanaticism that will brook no opposition. Its prime tactic is to educate Muslim youth into believing that such hatred is a divine imperative, so as to create new generations of jihadist suicide bombers.
One might think that seven years after Sept. 11 this insight would be self-evident rather than controversial. Especially since the film goes to great lengths to assert that most Muslims do not subscribe to these beliefs and are peace-loving citizens whose faith is being hijacked by a radical minority.
But though it does no more than state the obvious about the rise of Islamism, its tactics and its purpose, “Obsession” appears to have a message that many Americans neither wish to hear nor believe. Indeed, the free distribution of the film, which was produced in 2005 and first released on DVD in 2007, has set off a firestorm of criticism from Islamist groups and liberal media figures.
The Council on American Islamic Relations has organized protests against the film’s distribution, asserting that the movie seeks to “incite hate and bigotry.” And some in the media are marching to CAIR’s drumbeat. The Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina refused the DVD insert because, a statement from its publisher asserted, “it was divisive and plays on people’s fears and served no educational purpose.” The Detroit Free Press and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also declined the DVD. The latter explained its decision by saying the film “troubled American Muslims.”
These newspapers did not refute a single point in the film. But the raising of the issue of Islamist terror has, in their view, become not merely politically incorrect but inadmissible and, therefore, something that must be suppressed. That these publishers, who should be facilitating such a debate rather than squelching it, have acted in this manner is an ominous sign of the times.
The film also has run afoul of some supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. It is true that most of the DVDs were inserted into newspapers in swing states. That has led some paranoids to argue that the documentary’s message is a subliminal argument against their candidate, and that it has been placed into newspapers to mislead voters into thinking Obama is a Muslim.
The problem with this whole argument is that the film contains absolutely nothing about American politics or the election.
While some on the left may consider raising awareness about the dangers of Islamism to be something only Republicans do, that is not a point Democrats ought to concede if they are as tough on terror as they claim to be. Indeed, one of the prominent voices heard in the film is attorney and author Alan Dershowitz, a Democrat and supporter of Obama. But some Democrats are now so spooked by the topic of the Islamist threat, they think even mentioning the topic in a nonpolitical context is somehow part of a conspiracy against their hero.
Indeed, Keith Olbermann, a host on the MSNBC cable news network and a prominent liberal fan of Obama in the media, denounced “Obsession” as “neocon porn,” as if his banal grudges against the neoconservative movement trump the facts about radical Islam.
Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria, Va., a leading figure in the “Rabbis for Obama” group, called a press conference to blast the movie. In a scary echo of language used by CAIR, he said “Obsession” is a “thinly veiled call for disparagement and distrust of all Muslims,” which seeks to “limit the rights of Muslims to enjoy the free exercise of their faith.”
But does Moline really believe that speaking openly about the way Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas seek to teach children to hate Jews restricts the rights of peace-loving American Muslims to practice their faith? Does he not know that, as the film rightly asserts, the primary targets of the Islamists are moderate Muslims who have been slaughtered and silenced by the radicals?